"Neglected Justices"

Neglected U.S. Supreme Court Justices are getting their day in the sun thanks to the Vanderbilt Law Review. A symposium on neglected Justices was held at Vanderbilt last spring, and the papers will be published by the law review. In the meantime, you can listen to audio of the conference on-line. Some of the subjects of this symposium strike me as having been more "neglected" than others, but the papers should be of interest nonetheless. Justices and authors involved in the project are:


Early Supreme Court

Samuel Chase, by Stephen B. Presser, Northwestern University Law School

James Iridell, by William R. Casto, Texas Tech University Law School

Marshall Court

William Johnson by Mark R. Killenbeck, University of Arkansas Law Center

Bushrod Washington by Herbert A. Johnson, University of South Carolina Law School

Civil War Era

John McLean by Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School

The Gilded Age

David J. Brewer by J. Gordon Hylton, Marquette University Law School

Rufus W. Peckham by James W. Ely, Vanderbilt University Law School

Early Twentieth Century

George Sutherland by Samuel R. Olken, John Marshall Law School

Pierce Butler by David R. Stras, University of Minnesota Law School

Sherman Minton by Linda C. Gugin, Indiana University Southeast

The conference opened with a keynote by G. Edward White, University of Virginia. Commentary was provided by Mark Brandon, Vanderbilt University Law School; Daniel Sharfstein, Vanderbilt University Law School; Alfred L. Brophy, now of the University of North Carolina School of Law; Linda Przbyszewski, University of Notre Dame; and Lisa Bressman, Vanderbilt University Law School; and the conference ended with a roundtable that included Vanderbilt's Suzanna Sherry.

To download audio for these panels, click on the panel titles above, or visit the conference website.

Image credit: Bushrod Washington.